Criticism pours in for Amit Shah after his comment ‘People of different states should communicate in Hindi’

April 8: Evoking sharp criticism from the opposition, Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Friday said that Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and not to local languages. The Home Minister made the remarks during the 37th meeting of the Parliamentary Official Language Committee in New Delhi.

The Chairperson of the Official Language Committee, Shri Amit Shah said that the Prime Minister, Shri Narendra Modi, has decided that the medium of running the government is the Official Language and this will definitely increase the importance of Hindi. He said that now the time has come to make the Official Language an important part of the unity of the country. He said that when citizens of States who speak other language, communicate with each other, it should be in the language of India. Shri Shah said that Hindi should be accepted as an alternative to English and not to local languages. He said that unless we make Hindi flexible by accepting words from other local languages, it will not be propagated.

The Union Home Minister informed members that now 70 percent of the agenda of the Cabinet is prepared in Hindi. He said 22,000 Hindi teachers have been recruited in the eight states of the North Eeast. Also, nine tribal communities of the North East have converted their dialects’ scripts to Devanagari. Apart from this, all the eight states of the North East have agreed to make Hindi compulsory in schools up to Class X.

The statements have drawn sharp reactions from opposition parties, including the Congress, Shiv Sena, DMK and Trinamool Congress (TMC). Reacting to Union Home minister Amit Shah’s remarks, Congress leader and former Karnataka chief minister Siddaramaiah said in a tweet, “As a Kannadiga, I take strong offence to @HMOIndia @AmitShah’s comment on Official language & medium of communication. Hindi is not our National Language & we will never let it to be.”

Speaking on the issue, Shiv Sena leader Manisha Kayande said, “There seems to be an agenda to lessen the value of regional languages and parties in what Amit Shah has said.” Kunal Ghosh, a spokesperson for the TMC, said, “We respect Hindi but we are opposing the imposition of Hindi. English is used internationally, a status quo should be maintained by the government on the issue of language.

Kovai Sathyan, a spokesperson for AIADMK which is a part of the BJP-led NDA, said on the issue, “Hindi cannot replace any regional language and for every person, their language is dearer and this statement of Hindi replacing any of the regional languages is not going to happen.” Pointing out that Hindi was not India’s national language, the TMC said his agenda of “one nation, one language and one religion” will remain unfulfilled. The TMC on Friday said any effort to impose Hindi on non-Hindi speaking states will be resisted.